The Jane Doe plaintiff suing Nigel Lythgoe for an alleged sexual assault in the backseat of his chauffeur-driven car in 2016 is pushing for a trial as soon as possible after filing an amended complaint that revised the date of the purported incident by 24 hours.
At a court hearing on Monday, a lawyer for the woman requested that the judge schedule a jury trial for the earliest possible date next year. “This is a very simple case,” the plaintiff’s lawyer Melissa Eubanks said. “I would like to get a trial date today.”
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lisa Sepe-Wiesenfeld declined the request, saying the court first must deal with Lythgoe’s pending demand that the Jane Doe be forced to reveal her true name. Instead, the judge agreed to speed things up by advancing the hearing on Lythgoe’s motion to September 11 from a prior date set for December.
The Jane Doe filed her initial complaint in February, two months after Paula Abdul first sued Lythgoe and the production companies behind American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance in December. In her blockbuster complaint, Abdul alleged that Lythgoe sexually harassed and assaulted her multiple times while she was hosting or otherwise working on the reality competition shows. In one example, she claimed that Lythgoe trapped her in an elevator, forced her against the wall, grabbed her genitals and breasts, and forced “his tongue down her throat.”
Lythgoe vehemently denied Abdul’s allegations. One of his lawyers called them “purely fictional” in paperwork filed shortly before Abdul’s lawyer announced at a hearing in April that she’d reached tentative settlement agreements with American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance.
Four more women, including the Jane Doe with the 2016 assault allegation, sued Lythgoe in the wake of Abdul’s complaint. Two filed a lawsuit together in January alleging that Lythgoe groped and tried to kiss them in 2003 after they were selected as contestants on his All American Girl game show. Yet another Jane Doe filed a lawsuit in March, alleging that Lythgoe sexually battered her at his home in 2018. Lythgoe has denied any wrongdoing involving the five women.
The Jane Doe suing over the alleged car incident initially said she met Lythgoe at a Beverly Hills hotel bar on February 13, 2016 and accepted a ride home from him after he insisted on escorting the woman to her nearby apartment. She alleged Lythgoe trapped her in his chauffeur-driven “Bentley or Rolls Royce” and that he proceeded to “fondle her breasts and kiss her.” She claimed “Lythgoe even shoved his hand up (her) skirt and penetrated her genitalia.”
Lythgoe denied the allegations. In a filing last month, his lawyer wrote that Lythgoe was “nowhere near” a Beverly Hills hotel that night because he was at MusicCares event honoring Lionel Richie in downtown Los Angeles and later left the even with his “then-girlfriend with whom he spent the night.”
In an amended complaint filed earlier this month, the Jane Doe plaintiff changed the date of the alleged incident to February 12, 2016. Doe’s lawyer declined to comment on the amended complaint Monday. “Our policy is not to comment on active litigation unless necessary to protect the interests of our clients,” Eubanks wrote in an email to Rolling Stone. The lawyer for Lythgoe who attended the Monday hearing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lythgoe is asking the court to force the woman to reveal her identity. “Although plaintiff filed this lawsuit as ‘Jane Doe,’ she sued Mr. Lythgoe by name as part of a campaign to publicly smear his reputation while she improperly attempts to hide behind a cloak of anonymity,” his lawyers wrote in a May 31 filing. “Mr. Lythgoe is determined to fight these untrue claims and will prove the falsity of plaintiff’s allegations and expose plaintiff’s improper motives for bringing them.”